


welcome to the new age

by moodison



Series: mcyt soulflower [1]
Category: Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Arranged Marriage, F/F, F/M, Kinda, M/M, Multi, Sleepy Bois Inc as Family, Strangers to Friends to Lovers, Wilbur Soot-centric, dont ship real people, soulflower!au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-11
Updated: 2021-01-11
Packaged: 2021-03-15 20:40:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28694853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moodison/pseuds/moodison
Summary: So, soulflowers.They weren't all they were cracked up to be, that's for sure. Personally, Wilbur wasn't as obsessive over finding his soulmate as the rest of his classmates throughout college were, but it kinda sucked that he didn't even get the choice to ever get to be with them.In which, magic in modern world plus weird politics equals arranged marriage.
Relationships: Cara | CaptainPuffy/Niki | Nihachu, Clay | Dream/GeorgeNotFound (Video Blogging RPF), Karl Jacobs/Sapnap, Wilbur Soot/Shubble, the last three are background, we'll add more as we go - Relationship
Series: mcyt soulflower [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2103345
Comments: 3
Kudos: 22





	welcome to the new age

**Author's Note:**

> i dunno what the heck im doing at all. but hey, first fic on the internet, lets see how bad my writing is.
> 
> these are all real people, dont ship real people, i dont have any credits to the characters or the dream smp or smp earth.

Soulflowers.

/sōl flou(e)rs/

On your fourteenth birthday, dating back to the very first day of 2000, you’d receive a pot, a tulle bag of plant seeds, and a letter. You were supposed to plant the seeds in your pot, to grow a flower that was your soulmate’s ‘soulflower’, and in pretty script that was always different for everybody there would be the name of the flower your soulmate had for you, and a picture accompaniment. 

Wilbur, twenty four and kinda in uni, hadn’t paid a single fucking mind to the tulle and terracotta in his closet since- ten years ago? Right, yes, twenty four minus fourteen equals ten, yes, numbers.

Unfortunately, quarantine had a way of bringing these things back to mind.

After finding that taking a gap year and having virtually nothing to do in a boring squished apartment (it was more a cubicle to be honest) that was sometimes suffocatingly lonely (his interactions with his roommate was minimal), his mind eventually wandered back to soulflowers when he scrolled past the sixth picture of a budding soulflower on Tumblr. He’d never cared much for soulflowers, though they were all anybody ever talked about at home in college, but he was too busy going to work out of sheer boredom in their sleepy middle of nowhere town.

At least his other parents werent here to frown disapprovingly at his not-100 percents or distict lack of girlfriend, or that he hadnt even planted his soulflower yet. Well, they’d probably be pretty happy to see he was looking up how the hell to plant a plant. If this wasnt the pinnacle of stupidity, then what was?

But even more than the worry that came with the plant (what if he accidentally killed it?) , Wilbur dreaded opening the letter. Soulflowers, essentially, were you, they were important. Frankly, he was scared his was going to be a gladiolus or an orange lily or aconite or-

Deep breaths, deep breaths.

Wilbur rolled onto the floor in surprise, his feet catching him so he was perfectly stood up and ready to (fight? He was a weak bitch, he couldn’t punch anything for shit,) at the knocking on the door. “Yeah?” 

His roommate, Scott, poked his head through the door to see Wilbur failing to block the dirt mess he’d made with the soil. Thankfully, he didn’t say anything about it, but Wilbur could also tell that the other guy couldn’t really give less of a shit. Zoomer L’manburgians really could not be less bothered with anything that didn’t even indirectly affect them, he’d know of all people. “’M gettin tacos, you want any?”

Augh, that Mexican food place at the shopping center was sinfully good- but also- oh, whatever, he was technically royalty so who cared if he was a little fat over quarantine. “Uh yeah, sure.” It was him, he cared.

His heartrate evened out as Scott nodded and closed the door, before spiking again as he realized the letter was on the bed with his name exposed. Fuck, he hadnt seen it, had he? Wilbur hoped not, there was a reason that the identities of the Antarctica royals were mostly anonymous… eh, if he knew then he knew, there wasn’t anything Wilbur could do if he did.

Abandoning the still open letter and now planted soulflower to root around in the closet for their vacuum, he pulled out the scuffed old thing (it took an embarrassingly long time) and cringed at the loud screech it left ringing in his ears. Hoping that a minute was all that he needed to erase the fact that he’d spilled mulch on the wood floor, Wilbur clumsily pushed it far into the back behind an ironing board as soon as it looked decebtly clean.

But that meant he had nothing to distract himself from finding out what his soulflower was- it wasn’t even that normal to be scared to know what your soulflower was, it didn’t dictate your personality or anything like that it just. Y’know. Was basically you in a nutshell. Squeezing the envelope, he made a split second descision and shoved it under the flower pot.

Wilbur’d open it when the first flower bloomed.

He’d said that in February, hadnt he?

April 28th, barely more than a month later. Wilbur didn’t have a single clue what the black flowers were, the five-petaled but the center a green… roundish starish shape. They seemed to suck in and eat up the small amount of light that came with the cloudy skies of L’manburg, and now Wilbur had two heavy letters he needed to open. Though, he was sure he could at least predict a little bit of the recent one’s contents. He had heard about the Dream Kingdom’s increasing tension with the Empire, after all, which was a little tough to explain to his roommate when Scott came home to Wilbur panicking into a phone in rapid Antarctic. 

Thankfully, Scott had simply nodded knowingly, told Wilbur he sucked at being a broke uni kid, and accepted a bribe that would probably have set him for life if not for the sham of L'manburg’s government and how badly they were dealing with this magic virus shit.

But also his worry was very very justified when the Empire had auffered more than the Kingdom in the Third Endlantis War, and that wasn’t even menitioning the big changes in the Empire. Ripping open the letter that had slapped him in the face in paper airplane form the one time he decided to open the wondow, he immediately recodnized the mannerisms pf the letter.

Fundy was going to be yeeting him back to the Capital, for preotection as a prince and because the Capital was one of the two places were you couldn’t nuke a person in the overworld. Likely the Kingdom was doing the same, ushering the First Son and however many else illegitimate or legit kids they had into their fortress of a city from their corners of the world.

Wilbur himself wasn’t even sure how many Antarctic rouals there were, and to be fair he was still pretty high up in the line of succession, kinda. Gran had a fuckton of kids, Phil being the oldest alive one and next in line when she eventyally keels over from her cursed legs, pneumonia, or old age, because she was a crazy old bat that was going with the iron crown till she died. And then it went Wilbur (it sounded like a crapton of effort he couldbt be quite bothered with, no thank you) and then Tommy. Who was, while also like fourteen, not too interested in she collossal amount of being polite and political that came with being Emperor. Wilbur pitied the Dream royals, who were chosen through succession and couldn’t refuse the crown until they died.

Yes, his gran was the Antarctic Emperor. She didn’t like that she had to be Empress, so one of the biggest rules in the house was that when you were the law and found one unreasonable, change it. Or break it, but Phil tried to stop that generally.

… his main concern was whether his soulflower was going to survive the virus, much less thr generall chill of the Antarctic. For once in his life, he hoped the medieval and generally grandiose as fuck stronghold the royal family lived in had a greenhouse or something. Casually, he stuck the letter out of a window, holding a lighter under it and watching the flame eat away at the paper before dropping it into a puddle three stories below. Gran and Phil were always really weird about how they contacted Wilbur, and his head spun when things like tracing correspondence came into play.

Wilbur probably should have been more concerned about catching the virus and passing it onto his gran, but Fundy and most of the other castle staff were nonmagic and therefore immune. The flowers, however, were very magic and at risk of just dying and he didn’t want his one chance of having a guaranteed friend dying. 

It was fine, it was fine, he had an whole day to google how the fuck to do it right.

Well, he really hoped it was fine.

Coming home to the castle was strange, to say the least. The castle was home to more than the extensively large royal family (the Empress, her princes and princesses, their kids the marquees and so on and so forth), it was home to the staff too (composed of advising politicians to the royals, cleaning and caretaking staff, soldiers, and veterans with no place to go, and more Wilbur wasn’t sure about,). But typically, it was so… empty, to him. Too large.

And it was, but it seemed less so with the amount of people that were stopped from going outside due to the pandemic. The large majority of the population couldn’t safely step outside, as they were magical, but only the nonmagic who were completely immune to the virus could now safely go anywhere.

Holding a backpack suitcase that contained his entire wardrobe and nothing else (he didn’t own jack shit, ok. His guitar was on his back, and the plant was in his arms wrapped in a package.) Wilbur waved to Fundy as the fox eared man (?) mock saluted him and disappeared into the winding halls. Uh, from the east wing of the castle he should have to take that turn and go down those stairs…

Oh good, his memory wasn’t that bad yet. 

Wilbur placed his palm onto the wall, the hidden scanner silently clicking the door open as it confirmed his magical imprint. His bedroom was just as he left it, bare and dark with heavy curtains pulled over a large window that was probably resistent to every kind of thing in existence. Carefully setting the plant’s package on the ground, he drew back the black fabric with closed eyes in anticipation of the Antarctic Empire’s 24/7 sunlight. 

Ripping open the paper package and throwing it into a trashcan across the room he hadn’t emptied before he’d left, Wilbur carefully lifted the black star flowers up and inspected it in the light that was never present in L’manburg. 

The center was similar to that of a buttercup’s, golden stem thingies against dark grey center that reached out towards the tips of the petals like a star. There was no such thing as a natural black flower, which corresponded to actual black soulflowers being unbelievably rare. Wilbur’d thought Fundy’s soulmate would’ve been the only person he’d ever known, even though he only knew them by association and never met them, to have a black soulflower. But the blooms werent the purple he thought they were, they were dark, black bluish color like the Antarctic skies in winter.

It scared him, when he’d first remembered the singular black lily that belonged to Fundy’s soulmate. Lilies were already some of the worst kinds of soulflowers as funeral flowers, but… nobody but Fundy ahd read his letter, but black couldn’t mean anything good.

All the more reason for Wilbur to procrastinate on opening his letter!

(It’d have a picture of the soulflower his soulmate was in possession of, his soulflower, and the- symbolism, he supposed. You generally couldn’t find your soulmate unless you knew what both of yours and your soulmate’s flower was. 

He didn’t even know what the hell kind of flower the black stars were.)

But that was okay, Wilbur had plenty of time to flip through online flower dictionaries. He did have to self isolate for two weeks anyways, so it was… not an inefficient use of his time. And maybe he’d finally rip the bandaid off and read the stupid letter, but that was highly unlikely from his past behavior, so.

Spoiler alert, Tommy had wiggled it out of somebody and found out he finally planted his soulflower.

Wilbur tapped accept call and stared up at the ceiling as the he prepared to hear his brother shout through the speakerphone. He was currently laying down on the window seat, which he found more comfortable than the bed because it was just too large, (it had nothing to do with the flowers on the windowsill, nope, Wilbur most certainly didn’t feel better next to the black stars,) with his cellphone on the floor because he didn’t need it anywhere near his ears, thank you very much.

“Eyyy, Wilbur! Are you at home?” Tommy crowed, probably going nuts in his dorm room. Wilbur heard, faintly, Tubbo telling Tommy off for almost kicking something over, which only further proved his suspicion. “Sorry, sorry, Tubbo. But Wilbur, big man!”

Wilbur let out a huff of laughter, flipping over from laying on his back to leaning over the edge of the not-bed. “What, Tommy?”

“Heard you planted your soulflower, Wil, how is it?”

The small smile slipped from his face, remembering that he still needed to open the letter. “It’s… going.”

Saying that turned out to be a bad idea, as immediately Tommy jumped to the worst conclusion, “It… it isn’t faded or anything, right?” Wilbur heard Tubbo, who was while probably trying to give them a modicum of privacy, was also terrible at it and was also reasonably decently worried about, y’know, a soulflower fading. Death, the whole thing.

“No, no, nothing like that. It’s, um.” Wilbur was quick to put that to a stop, but he hesitated. Oh, he might as well tell Tommy, they were brothers and Tommy would try and find and help him if he didn’t know. “Its black and I don’t know what it is.”

He could hear Tommy search for words. “Is it, like, a black black or purple black like Fundy’s?” his younger brother settled on, and Wilbur could picture him flopping down to lay doen properly on his bed.

“S’ totally black,” Wilbur confirmed, tracing the fleur de lis pattern on the window seat cushion/mattress absently.

“… huh. Well, I can certaintly say I’m looking forwarda to meeting your soulmate, Wil.”

“Yeah- yeah. I think I am, too.”

\-----------

“Yo, Wilbur.”

He blinked, hoping he wasn’t imagining the deep and drawling monotone voice. Wilbur sat up, looking towards the doorway that people he could count on his fingers had access to and dropping his phone he’d zoned out of looking at ages ago intk his lap.

Techno was leaning on the open door, looking almost the exact same as Wilbur remembered him with the minor exception that his brown roots were peeking through and his hair was out of his usual professional braid and piled in a haphazard bun.

Wilbur brightened, swinging his legs off of the window seat. “Techno!” They weren’t biologically related, no, but the older ex(?)-mercenary might as well have been after a turn of events had led him to being Phil’s right hand man in the Third Endlantis War. “Hi! Um. What are you doing here?”

He sighed. “Phil’s been away at the mainland coastal borders helping the evacuation and sterilizing efforts, and Tommy’s in quarantine with Tubbo in their rooms. You’re not, so… yeah.”

Oh. So that was why he hadnt seen anything of his father… well, it made sense, the mainland was directly bordering the Kingdom, but it- actually, yeah, things were already that tense.

“Hang on, it’s been fourteen days already?” Wilbur realized, the fidget toy he’d been fiddling with stopping. It hadnt felt like two weeks at all, it had felt like a month but Wilbur was also aware that his sense of time was fucked, so he’d only thought itd been a week. He stepped back, refusing his natural instict to close the door (on one hand, he hated having it open, on the other Techno opened it so Techno closed it,) and was not even surprised when Techno began dumping his books on the floor without so much as a second glance to the black star flowers.

Wilbur padded back over to his window seat, not fussed in the slightest.

“Oh, and I got these for you.”

Wilbur’s grateful for the feel of paper under his fingers, with pitcures that werent made of pixels and blue light. It’s one less reason to have a headache, and phone light doesn’t quite matter when Antarctic sunlight never fades in spring.

\------------

The Dream Kingdom is fucked in the way of morals, but the Empire is barely better. 

The Antarctic Empire is a military country, in that it’s a foating, freezing, island in comparison to the sprawling Kingdom that stretched acrross a continent and L’manburg across the ocean, Pogtopia rising up when the L’manburgians settled… and Wilbur was getting off track. His point was, most of the Empire’s food came from the small (well it was actually kinda fucking big) amount of territory they had on the Dream continent and they imported from other places, and they had a massive, well trained, and well geared military.

War and fighting used to be a mandatory thing in schools, when his grandmother still held the majority of power and Phil wasn’t the Emperor in everything but name. Phil grew up normal, not royal, unlike every other ruler and witnessed what the drafting age and military schooling and growing up knee deep in war and politics did. What the Third Endlantis did to the country, kids not even out of middle school gearing up in enchanted armor and picking up a military issue blade. 

Phil told them, Wilbur and then Tommy and then Tubbo, that they never came home. That the people just accepted it as normal, when people that were groaing about schoolwork not a month ago never found their soulmates and the legal working age was just as young. The minimum age for being Emperor being twelve.

(After living in L’manburg for the first fourteenish years of his life, Wilbur saw too. What the hell kind of business did they, the Empire, have to shove millions of lives or guns onto a middle schooler?)

Wilbur learned, when he still thought of the iron crown as something to be treasured and not a nessecary weight, about fighting rings and mercenaries and slaves that killed and fought each other for people that paid good money. He’s seen footage of Techno’s underground shows, before Phil took it upon himself to get the rest of the royal family from running around in confusion like headless chickens and give them a solid plan.

A minority, a few, of his aunts and uncles were terrifying when they could sit on their pride, listen up, and realized that there was a modicum of a point there.

But none of them are scarier than what Techno can be. Sometimes when they’ve stayed up for too many days at a time for no particular reason and are drunk on drowsiness, Wilbur will stray to the touchy topics a sober Wilbur would never. Techno speaks blandly about his past, or most of it at least, wearing a number on the back of his neck without a care and faking nonchalance when reminiscing about the blood cult he’d been sold into.

Sometimes, when they were drunk on something stronger than sleep deprivation, they’d hopelessly laugh about how bad of a soulmate they both were. Wilbur planting his soulflower five years after receiving it, Techno never elaborating about the faded and only half bloomed yellow roses even though he had both his and his soulmate’s flowers. 

Techno’s soulmate’s never again vibrant roses, like Phil’s dusty and muted red chrysanthemums, signified a dead soulmate. 

Techno having both a candytuft (indifference) plant and the roses (yellow roses were friendship, platonic soulmates) meant that he’d met his soulmate before. Wilbur wasn’t sure what was worse, never meeting your soulmate but knowing that they were dead or having your dead soulmate’s flower.

In a nutshell, Wilbur wasn’t quite sure how Techno had done and lived through all that and was, well, surface level at least, doing pretty good for himself. Despite being dogshit at politics like Tommy, being as crap at casual social interaction as Wilbur and being in a world totally different to the one he was born in-

Yeah, he looked up to Techno, was there a problem?

Well, tonight was one of those nights. Their choice of narcotic wasn’t alcohol or weed, not classy plants rolled into a cigarette or pills in orange bottles. Just plain old sadness and the crash of feelings after days of tiredness, that was all. 

Eventually, they find their way to the topic of soulflowers, but that’s not surprising. They always do. But it’s Wilbur’s turn to be the one who gets the small details wheedled out of him rather than the other way around (he knows that Techno’s soulmate was an enby, had pink hair, was incredibly short… not much more), and he supposed this is his karma from trying to avoid responsibility. 

“So black flowers, huh?” Techno eventually says after slurping the remains of a cup of orange juice long after it had emptied. “They kinda look like buttercups, but, y’know, big and pointy.”

Wilbur didn’t know how Techno knew what buttercups looked like, they werent native to the Antarctic and Techno’s soulflower was a fairly common and popular flower. He didn’t remember what buttercups looked like until three days ago. “It’s the ran… nunculus family, which is hella fucking big, and theyre basically hellebores but smaller, but that’s just christmas roses. And there are natural hybrids that are black but I don’t think soulflowers can be hybrids?”

“Yup.”

“So yeah, the um, I guess it’s just a black christmas rose? And there are two main meanings and I think I know which one, cos one of them’s tranquility and shit and you know.” Wilbur gestured to himself. He doubted his soulmate, with a black flower, was tranquil in any sense of the goddamn word.

Techno gives him an unimpressed once over, a singular eyebrow raising. “Uh-huh.”

His boice goes up multiple octaves, giggling ti himself a taf. “Yeah, um, the other one’s ‘scandal’ and ‘anxiety’. We don’t… we don’t really need more of that, do we?” 

“Uhhhh.” Techno starts counting off his fingers, ticking them off as he leaned back and stared blankly at the ceiling. “Yer uncle started blowing the up the Kingdom, aunt gets put in a psych ward after opening a gajillion nether portals in a Kingdom city, that’s our scandals, and anxiety- pretty sure we got that covered.” The modern day urban legend, the ‘blood god’, gestured dismissively around the room.

Then they start blathering on about random anxious thoughts, which then leads to the weather. Well, not quite the weather, but rather the constant cynicism that came with L’manburg’s cloudy skies that seemed to permeate every L’manburgian younger than thirty five and the heavy tiredness that Antarctic winters decided was a wonderful way to inconvenience them. Spoiler alert, it wasn’t.

Wilbur thinks its only when Techno snores mid sentence after they get through their nth shitting on L'manburgian politics, Wilbur’s words slurring together after his eyes had dropped half an hour ago, that his phone began buzzing insistently. Fumbling with the thumbprint lock and picking up the call from what was Phil’s new temp number, he mumbled a jumbled, “Phil?”

“Wil, I don’t want to alarm you,”

The total quiet on Phil’s end was disturbing, and Wilbur sat up, awake, when he heard his father’s fast breathing and being very alarmed. “What’s happened, are you alright?” He looked over to Techno, debating whether to wake up the light sleeper or just let him eavesdrop. “Phil- has something happened with the Kingdom, Phil?”

Phil sighs, and Wilbur can picture his dad deflating. “We’ve come to a peacetalks agreement, so no, nothing bad yet. But, uh, Wil you know how Dream peacetalks are. I don’t-“ His heart drops. Crap. The Antarctic Empire was going to be losing something, something important, by the end of this. “I don’t know if I can keep you and Tommy out of this, I’ll be honest with you. I just… don’t know.”

And there’s really only one thing Wilbur can say to that, as he was basically the Crown Prince when Gran stepped down after this debacle. Really only one thing he could do, really, other than pass the responsibility onto Tommy.

“It’s alright, Phil. Don’t let them have the stronghold.”

There was a reason why only select from the Antarctic Empire had access to Endlantis, after all.

\-------------

Six months. 

Any kind of political thing that lasted six months was bound to be disgusting in some way, shape, or form. In that time, Wilbur abandoned the flower research (he’d already figured out his soulmate’s flower anyways,) for the complicated Dream Kingdom politics that was not too well known even in their own country. And the peacetalks only ended when King Christopher stepped down and his son, the now King George, finally made the final fucking say.

The Kingdom is dissimilar to the Empire, where in Antarctica the Emperor is at the head and eyeball deep in politics, which is why everyone in currently disregarding the Empress for Phil as the de facto ruler of the Empire, and the current monarch can be booted by popular vote from the people. Which was what was beginning when the whole nether portal thing was happening, and was basically in effect as soon as peacetalks were over. And current Crown Princes and Princesses can pass off the title to the next in line permanently, removing them from the line of succession entirely, except their kids and descendants were still in line. 

Kings, or their First Sons, unfortunately, could not pass it off without major reason. Wilbur would feel bad for George if he was less embroiled in the entire conflict and crappy politics. It was also a major patriarchy.

But Kings did have an overall less say in the whole matter, as a result of the fact that they almost cannot be removed from power. They do still have a fat load of power, but the Assembly (a group of representatives from each of their twelve states) could overturn the King’s word in most cases. Kings were also less required to be involved in the whole thing, because the Assembly was basically the greater half of the government. Corruption, yay.

Oh, and the Dream.

The Church is greatly ruled by the kings of the Dream Kingdom. Every new King will have a whole conplicated ceremonial ritual thing where they pick a new Dream, and the Dream’s role is to be a sword, shield, and puppet to the king. Older Dreams retire, and are generally sworn to secrecy or dead, but rumor has it there is not only one Dream, not with the amount of blank-masked people randos claim to see and as an older and deader Dream said, like, once. It’s something to do with their religion, and Wilbur’s pretty sure souflowers are considered evil for kings and first sons and Dreams to have as it is something a king or Dream will prioritize over the country.

So, uh, yikes. Dreams, who are said to be blessed, sound scary as all fucking hell. Maybe that’s the reason why so much of the Assembly bends to the King, theyre scared of being fucking slit by the Dream.

Essentially, the Assembly and king generally handle massive shit, like nationwide and international kind of shit, and each of the twelve states have their own semi-democracy thing going on. Its so fucking complicated, and this is only surface level shit, what the hell, this isn’t even involving under the table deals and grudges and corruption and super secret shit like blackmail.

Wilbur stops thinking about and trying to predict the political things the Kingdom is trying to push and get rid of and what the hell they want from the Empire when he realizes that there is not point to predicting if he cant do anything about it. 

So, six months, right, King Christophe steps down (probably due to pressure from a third party that may or may not be trying to control the Antarctic-Dream conflict) and King George finally ends peacetalks and the entirety of the two countries (and probably L’manburg and Pogtopia as well) breathe out a sigh of relief at the fact that mass death of the civilian population was not going to happen. He’s glad, but Wilbur’s also waiting for a phone call from Phil to say to him that he’s gotta fucking die or give them magic or something worse. Like blood, or something, but that wouldn't be helpful to them just an inconvenience to one person being in possession of royal DNA. Which could mean cauldron babies he was technically related to, voodoo, or… oh, Wilbur didn’t know.

Most likely he was going to be held hostage, probably. That wouldn’t work too well though, because Wilbur was the petty kind of guy that’d rather die than let somebody use him as leverage to get anything. And anyways, George was probaably smart enough that even their Crown Prince (was he still Crown Prince if the Kingdom had him? Wilbur’s sure that’d be something they’d like, but again, stepping down and shit.) wasn’t even nearly worth the Empire or the stronghold.

That certaintly didn’t mean he wasn’t pacing holes theough his floor, though!

Wilbur nearly tripped on air when the tv made for video confrences displayed a number that was different from… actualky, six months was feasibly enough to have changed numbers. “… Hello?” The pit grew in his stomach when he didn’t hear Phil’s immediate response, and the videocall tv displayed just a very dark room, where he could barely make out the outline of a sofa and a petson sitting primly in the middle. They didn’t look like Phil.

“Hi.” The voice was noticebly not Phil, with a Kingdom accent instead of a L’manburgian-Antarctic one, and maybe a little bit higher is the musician in Wilbur wanted to show up. “This is Wilbur Phillip Soot-Gold?”

Ok, ok. This didn’t necessarily mean anything, but why the full name, that was just eurgh. “And who am I speaking to here?” No, no, he was not going to tap his leg, that was unprofessional, but- no. Wh- wait, no, that meant something, turning the lights on was such a big drama move- what the hell was that the Dream? Nobody else wore a blank smily mask right???

The Dream shifted, crossing their legs and reaching up to reajust the unneeving maso. “That’s not important. I’m here to ask you, on the behalf of the Dream Kingdom, to accept the Dream’s hand in marriage.”

Huh. Right, well, time to dissect whatever the fuck that mean. Wilbur already knew this wasn’t really asking, it was mildly disguised demanding, and the Dream was either referring to himself in both first and third person, or this was an old Dream and not the new one. Or there were actually more than one Dream every generation. Also, marriage? What kind of benefit did marriage have for the Kingdom? Probably hoping that crossing blood would mean his and whoever the Dream he was marrying’s kids would be allowed by the magic in the stronghold, honestly.

But then, wouldn’t he be marrying the king or a cousin? So this was still just a disguised longtime hostage situation then, huh.

“I accept.” He said finally.

The Dream was an unsettling man, however absolutely normal his features were. Less blond than Tommy’s bright ass bling bling poof, but not quite Techno’s lightish brown. The Dream mask just barwly covered the nose, and Wilbur could see a light smattering of dark freckles and- huh, werent people from the Kingdom supposed to be tan? The guy looked like he hadnt seen the fucking sun in five years.

The othwr man ended the call just as Wilbur caught a glimpse of him smirking.

Well, he at least hoped he’d maybe figure out a Dream conspiracy or two while in wedlock with one of them. He fell sideways onto a pillow and began screaming into the thing.

Wilbur stopped, after a solid minute, because he hadnt drank water in a day and losing his voice didn’t sound like a good idea when he was required in whatever social shit the marriage thing was. Dragging his feet, he debated whether he wanted to stick his head under the faucet and clean up the make up now or just continue not drinking water, -oh. Nevermind, he just found that lip balm he lost a week agp, that’d work just as well. 

“Hey! Wilbur! Open up, Wilbur!” 

Tommy’s voice was muffled by both the bathroom door and the front door, but that didn’t quite matter when he was very very shouty. Wilbur ignored him, Tommy had access, he’d remember it. Eventually.

“What, Tommy,” Wilbur started, using his foot to open the bathroom door to see his brother barge in and stare at him with wide eyes and looking like he was about to throw hands from across the room. Tommy was not very scary when he was all stick limbs and grabby hands, however.

He at least had the courtesy to close the door behind him. “Uh.” Tommy’s mind seemed to realize something imperitive as his voice went up an octave into his phone-call voice. “…So how’re you?” 

Hm. Suspicious timing, Tommy knew about the peace-politic and payment situation in some way for sure. Eavesdropping? Phil? Techno? … Invisibility- no, he came from outside the room, unless his brother could phase through walls now. But if Tommy’s magic was that strong then literally the entire world would know that the Antarctic Empire has a magic genius.

Wilbur shrugged, flopping his arms more than just a tad bit. “I don’t know, Tommy, howre you?” He mocked, crashing onto the bed with a thin layer of dust on it. Maybe he lived royal life incorrectly when he didn’t have cleaning staff waiting on him and parties with celebrity kids and wore exclusively million dollar shoes, but hello, he preferred privacy and dust over people in his room.

“Why, I’m just- peachy! Just peachy, Wilbur, just- wondering, you know, when you got a girlfriend.” Tommy gestured wildly at nothing in particukar. The air, maybe, but Wilbur had never been in a relationship with air. He hasn’t even dated anybody since his college girlfriend broke up with him over text halfway into the quarantine. “You know, the girl who’s trending on Twitter right now?”

Brown eyes slid from the ceiling to squint in mild horror at Tommy. Trending, on Twitter. His nonexistent girlfriend- oh. Now he got it, not his fake girlfriend, his… fiancee? Wife- eugh, that just sounded gross, no. The person, well, the female Dream he was supposed to be marrying (the thought of being tied to the man with serial killer vibes was frightening, so yay for that,) was trending on Twitter for something related to him, presumably, or Tommy wouldne be freaking out about him being not single. 

The blond scrolled through his phone to show him the trending thing. “It’s already number six on trending in Antarctica, Wil ‘#Realcrown’ is apparently what theyre calling the whole thing. Hold on, lemme read it out, there’s a description now- ‘Faceless FPS shooter player and regular on many of her friend’s Twitch streams, username Shubble known for a fake crown, sends fans into a frenzy with an engagement tweet with an royal Antarctic ring’. Huh, didn’t know she streamed.” Tommy muttered inder his breath. “How’d the fuck she get a ring?”

Making grabby hands and sitting up, Wilbur looked at the picture Tommy was zoomed in on. A slender and pale, she was probably also white, pianist hand held a bouquet of red roses with one of the simplest yet prettiest signature Antarctic ring. (it had the shine that was a thing nobody knew how to replicate, and there only like three rings and they all belonged to their family) It didn’t have three gems and wasn’t studded with diamonds, only a simple and small ultramarine jewel on what was probably enchanted 24karat gold. 

Phil probably handed it over as a confirmation that there actually was going to be an alliance marriage and political shit, whatever. 

Wonderful, his fiancee was a social media person that was mow about to be boosted into even more internet fame through political engagement. Woo. Hip hip hooray.

His eyelids dropped again, his brain now set on figuring out why this was now broadcasted and a big thing and public. Was it stalkerish of him to try and look for clips of her on it internet, or was ot smart… actually, it was probably both. That wouldn’t metter in the long run though because she was still faceless. 

“Dunno.” Wilbur finally answered. “Politics, probably, I dunno. Maybe she’s the princess or something for all we fucking know. Also why do you assume I’m the one getting married, its just an Antarcica ring. Could be Phil, or even Gran but- probably not Gran.” Gran was not getting married, like, ever. It was simply out of the question.

“Well, you are getting married arenct you?” 

“I suppose so.”

Wilbur could almost feel what line of conversation Tommy wanted to ask. Why was he gettibg married, when he had a soulflower? Was this person Wilbur’s soulmate? If not, what was going on?

Thankfully, Wilbur thinks Tommy learned some social tact when the whole Antarctica-Kingdom conflict came around the bend. His brother doesn’t ask about the black christmas roses or anything, just shrugs and goes ‘okay’ while concocting some sort of plan to get in on the big boy shit.

When he leaves, the still very much numb prince begins to scroll through his fiancee’s Twitter. It’s cute, with a banner of two black cats and a pot of pink roses against a city sunset and a profile picture of a white crown logo. And if Wilbur was feeling any amount of normal he’d be smiling at her existential and, frankly, millennial tweets that werent of the stream she was popping into. He scrolls past the pinned post of the ring quickly, the barely 20 minute old tweet already spreading like wildfire and opening the Twitch link to somebody he didn’t know’s stream from an hour ago.

Its Just Chatting, and the chat moves almost too fast for Wilbur to catch the general drift of, which a series of YESes and NOs in response to the Amazon purchases on screen. The streamer man (Tommy’s age?) is laying down in pure defeat on one of those gamer chairs while a girl laughs at him with… an eh mic.

It makes sense, the things on screen are cat ears. It is an offense to most teenagers, in general, to wear cat ears, to be a furry, its just- ehh. 

Vaguely, Wilbur hears the streamer lament with the most comical whyyyyy while solemly spinning like a madman, but he’s searching the facecam for Shubble. He doesn’t expect to see her there, she’s faceless, but whatever.

He doesn’t really know what the hell is going on and to be honest, he doesn’t quite care. Either way, he sets the thing on low volume while he pretends to fall asleep and trick himself into actually passjng out.

It’s fuzzy after that.

\--------------

It occurs to Wilbur, while he’s on the airplane to permanently move to the Dream Kingdom, that his fiancee probably doesn’t know who he is other than the No-longer-Prince of Antarctica.

He supposes it’s just a testament to what they’ve made of the world that two rich kids living the life and are supposed to be in charge don’t know who theyre spending the rest of their lives with. Wilbur wondered how much it said about him that he wasn’t feeling much in particular. Not even too fussed over about it, it was simply how things were, and he was miserable all the time anyways so this wasn’t too big of a difference. Personally, at least.

Night City, the capital of the Dream Kingdom and one of the most modern and magical places on the planet. Skyscrapers touch the clouds as they dip to the airport, and lights fly around the city and in windows in the middle of the night. It’s a pretty city, and he already likes it more than some of the L’manburgian cities with how the air smells.

In his coat pocket, Wilbur’s phone buzzes and he stops at the airport pickup where his breath freezes in midnight December air that still is nothing compared to the chill back home. Fumbling to open it up and then having second thoughts when he didn’t recognize the number, he silenced it.

It rang him again.

Oh, god fucking dammit. Hitting the green accept on somebody that was probably whoever was taking him hostage in the Dream Kingdom, he didn’t expect to hear car traffic and loud music. Wilbur could very well run away into the maze city right now, couldn’t he? No, no, it probably wouldn’t work, Dreams and magic and all and shit, but worth a thought.

“Yo!”

They’re- surprisingly friendly and cheerful, to be honest. It’s disconcerting, especially at the hour and the situation that most would find entirely unethical and crap. He doesn’t recognize the voice, which doesn’t say much when he has virtually no friends and spent most of his time on his guitar and piano, and its only after a moment that he remembers to respond. “Hi, who’s this?” Wilbur cringes, he still doesn’t like his retail voice no matter how peppy and robot he sounded.

“Yo mama,-“ a different, more masculine voice snickered from farther away and barely 

“H!” person A giggled. He hoped that they werent, like, high or something, that was kinda the energy, the vibes, he was getting right now. “Uhhhhhhh… fuck, H, what do I tell them?” They moved the phone away from themselves for the last part, and he thinks that H responded, but blaring music covered over it. “Sooooooo… don’t worry about that part, it’s all chill, we’re just hired by King George to pick you up from the airport. Where you at?”

Two. Of course there’s two, probably mercenaries or- actually they were probably just Uber drivers or something, most mercenaries knew what they were doing more than these people sounded like. “Terminal Three, under the Delta sign,” He looked around for distinguishing features, but there really werent any, and it was… still very full. “I’m… very tall, the guy with a guitar case. Can’t miss me.”

“Okay, so I’m totally gonna miss you. Do you see the fanservice anime girl?” They didn’t wait dor a aresponse, and the music faded as a car door slammed shut. “I’m there, shorty with a smily mask. There’s literally a fat circle of nobody around me.”

Look to the left, an AT&T commercial. To the righ- oh. Okay. Yup, that was the new game that was getting a lot of hype for being… well it was getting a lot of hype. Weaving his way through the crowd and sweeping his eyes over people’s heads for a pearly white smile that probably didn’t scare him enough, he found it wildly inefficent and began just walking straight forwards regardless of stepping on people’s feet because ow. 

And he sees them, and Wilbur’s first thoughts are that he could probably beat them in a fight. They have the slouch, the stick limbs, bandaids littered across their face and fingers and bare arms in winter. What stable person wore short sleeves in winter, none, that’s who. It helped that they were a whole head shorter than him as well, though.

Wilbur’s still vaguely put off when their first in person worlds were, “Huh, I… kinda thought you were older. This is awkward.”

Looking downwards to meet the mask’s eyeholes, all he could say was a barely monotone, “What?”

“Y’know, I’m twenty… sevenish? How old are you- actually, it doesn’t really matter. Hi boo, nice to meet you.” They held out a thin, pale hand with a ring and bandaids and mottled with scars and small callouses. Nothing like the Twitter picture with roses. Wilbur shook it. “She/her.”

“… Wilbur Soot. He/him.”

She shrugged apologetically. “Sorry, I, uh, don’t have a name to give you, Wilbur. Heads up,” Inhale, exhale. “You’re not engaged to a person. You’re engaged to property of the Dream Kingdom.”

They sat, the other man driving and energy seemingly drained from all of them, in silence.

\------------

**Author's Note:**

> um. this is kinda trash. thanks for reading. <3
> 
> my tumblr is @weebo42 but idk how to link it so. Oops.


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